Through Mike's blog, I discovered this great article on the tyranny of the extroverts. Employers' preference for these annoying, chirpy creatures who couldn't stay silent for two minutes to save their lives has now extended even into the realm of engineering:
The top three priorities of the American Society for Engineering Education are (1) team skills, (2) communication skills, and (3) leadership. The National Science Foundation agrees; engineers need, "communication and interpersonal skills, better teamwork skills, [etc.]"
This is a very screwy world where very talented people in intellectual professions have to be discriminated against because they prefer to have lunch alone and dislike group activities. It doesn't seem to matter to anybody that those who need to be surrounded by people all the time might simply be trying to fill the silence in their heads left by a total absence of thoughts. Those who like to be alone, on the other hand, might need their alone time to think. Possibly even in order to come up with work-related innovations.
All of this fashionable blabber about teamwork fails to recognize that thinking, by its very nature, is always a solitary enterprise. You can talk all you want about collective brainstorming sessions, round-tables, and other useless inventions of the corporate world. The truth, however, remains that thinking is not done collectively:
I shouldn't have to say this, but there is a place in the world for introverts. Show me the ten most innovative minds of the 20th Century and I will show you ten introverts. From Einstein to Wittgenstein, not one of them could carry a conversation if you put handles on it. I wouldn't want to eat dinner with any of them, but I'm grateful they lived and died before the psychopharmaceutical industry had the chance to fix them.
Introverts of the world unite and end the tyranny of the extroverts! I know that it's hard for us to do since we are not into group activities. Still, I'm sure we are smart enough to find a way.
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